I have to say I'm disappointed with Warband. I put my faith in TW and pre-purchased it and it feels like a waste of money now I've played it enough.

The multiplayer doesn't interest me because it's very, very underdeveloped and in my opinion sloppy with many issues that are fine in SP but when exploited by players online it's real bad. It's very barebones in any case, just a few basic battle modes and constant respawning with no organising in the teams. It would have been cool to be able and run a semi persistent campaign world, similar to Dungeon Siege or Freelancer, with players running about doing their own thing and occasionally interacting if they wish (maybe even competing to be marshals in the same realm or for the heart of the same fair maiden, complete with duels etc) alas they did not attempt any of this and imo took the easy way out.

The single player has some additions but few of them haven't already been done by mods, even if they're ever so slightly better here (like the morale, which in the user made mod causes enemies to run to the edges of the map, while in Warband they actually exit the battle map and form into a new party that tries to flee - though in the mod it seems to happen more often and more realistically, not just when there are too few units left to matter as in Warband).

In any case, it won't last as long as the first game since progression through it feels much the same with the same skills, the same battles, the same armor and weapons aside from a few additions which aren't even top tier items and will therefor see little use (like the Elite armors which have similar stats to the Heraldic mail armors, give or take a point or two, yet are heavier, or the new Sarranid faction's swords).

It's essentially the same game with a few enhancements that aren't beyond the scope of mods (or version numbers), and overall has lesser scope than mods like Sword of Damocles do. It's quite absurd that people are asked to pay more or about as much as they paid for M&B, especially in Europe (I paid $25 which at the time was like less than 20 euros, Warband cost me 26.95 euros with the 10% pre-purchase discount which today is $36 or so) for this thing.

They didn't expand the tactical aspect within battles in any real way (the AI still just rushes to you giving you little time to position your units properly, even though you can now assign troops to custom battle groups, not just infantry, cavalry, archers, etc), and while they did expand the kingdom management aspect it's not beyond fan mod features, while the way some things are currently broken (garrison wages, tax funds, etc) it's not even worthwhile for players to own many fiefs.

The graphical improvements are also minimal at best, the game is still ugly with crude models and low resolution textures, it just has the addition of crude basic normal maps and HDR now, which don't help the overall visual quality. Fan mods like graphical enhancement, polished buildings and hopefully soon polished landscapes did far more to upgrade the visuals of M&B so TW's efforts were a total waste of precious resources that should have been put into tangible game features and fixes.

My advice to every owner of M&B is to wait for a price cut, by Christmas it's probably going to be on some Steam deal for $10 or less. It's worth about that much as far as new content goes, unless you really want to play multiplayer or something, but imo that will get old very fast even for those who like it and it will be up to mods to offer actually compelling game modes that go beyond its simple barebones content. I made a mistake, feel free to laugh at me but be warned.

For new users however, Warband is the version they should get, and they'll get their money's worth with the playability of a grand, unique game, though they should still wait a month or two for the bigger issues to be resolved, if they are. It's just a shame long time supporters got fucked over like this. This is essentially Warband v2.0 Beta (there are loads of issues with the new mechanics, as well as issues existing since the original M&B they've yet to fix) sold as a full new stand alone product. I'll not be supporting TW's next project if it's similar (and With Fire And Sword is similar or worse by what I've seen of it, but I suppose that's not strictly TW, though they did whore out their engine and what not and allow them to sell a product that's an M&B mod at best, much like they're doing with Warband).

I am very disappointed too , the content is simply not big enough even when compared with one people mod projects , the landscapes are still ugly… they could not afford to pay the guy who made the PL_test (improved landscapes) ? and animations are terrible.
I have hold a katana IRL and there is no way that someone will swing it on a horse back like a tennis racket , also spears are not to be hold like frying pans .
It looks like they didn't get it right on horses either , i am playing a mounted character and i love to have mounted soldiers and fight against knights and archers on horses ; it may work on MP ( i am not interested either on it) but it kills all the fun when horses go down …it is a case where realism kills enjoyment .
Bottom comment is : warband = epic fail and i won't even start talking about bugs

Originally Posted by Al3xand3r
The multiplayer doesn't interest me because it's very, very underdeveloped and in my opinion sloppy with many issues that are fine in SP but when exploited by players online it's real bad. It's very barebones in any case, just a few basic battle modes and constant respawning with no organising in the teams. It would have been cool to be able and run a semi persistent campaign world, similar to Dungeon Siege or Freelancer, with players running about doing their own thing and occasionally interacting if they wish (maybe even competing to be marshals in the same realm or for the heart of the same fair maiden, complete with duels etc) alas they did not attempt any of this and imo took the easy way out.

That would be sweet, but is unrealistic.

A MP campaign world would be a huge undertaking that is beyond what Talewords can do, and would at any rate require huge changes to mechanics unless all the players all are in the same party.

The game uses different timescales for world map movement and battles. Who would want to spend most of their time waiting for other players to resolve their combat?

It isnt a new conondrum either. Lots of turn based strategy games suffer from this issue. Multiplayer Master of Orion II, Heroes of Might & Magic, etc all have this issue, and it is most likely the reason that we dont have any MP campaign in the total War games. Such games are plagued by an amount of idle time that only really is bearable if you have very few players.

Cooperative control over the heroes in one wandering party should be doable though. The party leader handles world map gameplay, shopping and whatnot, and battles play out as coop MP….

I don't play the MP very much, the times I'm home and available don't fit well for most US servers, and I'm not good enough to battle the ping of European servers. But I love it, except death matches, screw that. They took the most fun part of the game, the combat, and made a nice easy way to enjoy that with and against others.

It's true the SP hasn't changed a whole lot. I'm fine with that, I'd rather have incremental improvements to something that I have loved for years, than have it drastically changing.

Could more have been done? Certainly. Was it worth my $30? For me, yes it was. Between my son and I we've put in over a 100 hours in the last two weeks. That crazy addiction that we got with the first is back.

Trelow did you try to siege a city/castle ? Also are you playing a horse archer ? the whole "you are getting momentum from the horse" thing is just crazy , im MB i can head shot Khergits from distance in this one i can not hit a standing elephant !

I have sieged a few castles. They are now more difficult thanks to the chamber blocking and stun when blocking chambered strikes, and general elevated deadliness of the AI. But the "force field" you get with your shields now is ridiculous and negates a lot of the enemy archers.

My horse archer is but a wee lass, I prefer playing as melee. Never was too good with the arching. I thought we always had momentum transferred to the projectile when mounted, or maybe I was just that bad a shot.

@Zaleukos:
It's not unrealistic, it would just take actual effort and be a task actually worth the price asked for Warband. The game's not really turn based either, it's mostly real time with pause (when you're not moving). Remove the pause and voila, the game's now multiplayer ready, add netcode and you're almost done. From then on, only adjust a few mechanics, like the spawning methods for in-progress battles, and maybe make a radious around installations like cities and castles a safe haven from attacks (as you 're no longer safe by standing still to ponder your next move, so you'll need to seek refuge first in order to do that) and other such minor changes.

It would take quite a bit more than removing pause from overland travel.

Overland travel is on a completely different timescale compared to battles even if you remove the pausing, which is why I compared it to the mentioned games (which all use a few radically different timescales in-game). You'd need to combine the overland and combat maps, and I think that is a bad idea as it would give either a much smaller gameworld or incredibly dull travelling, taking hours or days to get from point A to B in real time.

Granted I have zero experience with MMOs, but how big is your average MMO map compared to a M&B battlefield?

You would only need to combine the time scales of the overworld and battles that players are actively taking a part in, otherwise if it's between NPCs they could pass as in normal single player. You'd only need to make "real" in the overworld the battles fought by players. Actually, maybe not even that, any player not actively fighting would just need an update on the unit count of a battle someone else is fighting, so that the representation of "battle" on his screen can be accurate, and only care for more if he actually decides to join a battle already happening, which would be the only real tricky part, how to handle the spawning of new armies in an existing battle, but I suppose they could just spawn in the beginning area as if they started the battle, even if the rest armies are already on the other side of the map or all over it or wherever, much like any player that joins an already in progress MP match. Netcode wise it should be plenty possible, it would be as if each battle is an instance separate from the overworld (ie, when players fight they don't need overworld data, unless someone else decides to join, and players not fighting don't need all the data of the battles, just updated unit counts, until the battle is over and they separate into whatever groups are remaining), just like dungeon instances in MMOs, which since you asked tend to be far, far larger than M&B's map, and of course you don't update the whole world constantly but only what's in the immediate surroundings, otherwise it would be too much data to handle. Of course there are still things happening globally that you do update for everyone, so it would still be possible to provide players with updates of what's happening in the whole map, close or far, while dedicating most of the bandwidth to show what's happening within the player's spotting and tracking radious in detail. Other than that, I suppose you'd need a more strict leadership limit, so that you don't end up with 10 players with 300 units each able to fight together , as that would be too much, so perhaps the whole game would be rebalanced with say, 1/5th the SP game's possible max units for the larger parties, and of course a server-side battle size rather than the ability for each player to choose his.